Jester's 4e Ravenloft Pamphlet

[Jester of the FoS]

I have a 2 week break from my job coming up soon, so hopefully I will be able to final edit and crank out the PDFs for Lycanthropy, Vistani/Half-Vistani, Caliban, and an alternate mechanic for 4E Dark Powers checks. And a new sidebat/commentary on gnomes. Almost forgot about them.

My vision of 'Loft gnomes doesn't translate well; it does not mesh with 4e gnomes.
But I have my own 4e Player Guide coming with the same races, a good dozen feats, a handful of magic items and more!

[Jester of the FoS]

I have a 2 week break from my job coming up soon, so hopefully I will be able to final edit and crank out the PDFs for Lycanthropy, Vistani/Half-Vistani, Caliban, and an alternate mechanic for 4E Dark Powers checks. And a new sidebat/commentary on gnomes. Almost forgot about them.

My vision of 'Loft gnomes doesn't translate well; it does not mesh with 4e gnomes.
But I have my own 4e Player Guide coming with the same races, a good dozen feats, a handful of magic items and more!

Here's what I'm looking at so far:
Two new races and advice on ten others.
Advice on ten classes.
Four paragon paths.
Over 24 feats including 5 divine and 11 for the new races.
Five types of gun and three or so additional weapons, plus expanded improvised weapons.
18 magic items
Three new rituals
Plus new rules on Culture Level, Magic Rating, Languages, and more.

[Nikolas of the Mists]

My vision of 'Loft gnomes doesn't translate well; it does not mesh with 4e gnomes

Yeah, Gnomes are tricky. It's not necessarily their stats or abilities, rather their feel which is off That's why I am trying to do it via sidebar and not rewrite.

[Jester of the FoS]

Update:
Added a Player's Guide to the main post.
Or here:
http://www.box.net/shared/hppbvjnzs3

Let me know what you think and hunt away for anything broken or typo-ed. (just noticed something myself... grrr).

[Jester of the FoS]

Does it suck that badly?

[Zettaijin]

You obviously put a lot of work into these. Some things click, but a few things still irk me.

-I was never one for gnomes until the highly amusing "I'm a monster... rrrrawwwrrrr!!!" video produced by WotC to advertise changes in 4e. I think you did what you could to pull back the various gnome variants into one single race by focusing on their ingrained curiosity. This is commendable. Myself I prefer to see gnomes as obnoxiously social people who can't seem to stop talking about not only themselves but whatever it is that piques their curiosity, yet lack the ability to notice when they get on others' nerves. A second thought, that's not entirely different from your description (in a way).

-Elves don't seem to have it all that bad, now don't they? Every race has some manner of Ravenloft specific comment about how they fail to properly adapt or seem somehow lost, yet not our standard issue fantasy elves. Perhaps they feel a certain distance from the "nature" that used to nurture them, finding that the mist bound forests have a sinister taint that makes them feel somewhat unwelcome. Unwilling to coexist with humans for the most part (for practical considerations), they are left without a true sanctuary, forever to wonder if the forest may one day swallow them whole.

-Oh and lest I forget, I appreciate the Tieflings returning (mostly) to their Planescape roots. A mention of how some Tieflings can look particularly inhuman (enough to pass for Calibans in some cases) would be the proverbial cherry on top.

-Warforged feel too much like golems with a Robotman vibe. Cool stuff as I'm a fan of the Doom Patrol, but I'm not sold on "Robotman as a player character" in Ravenloft. Golems as player characters is something that has been addressed in the past in other threads, I think, and will likely continue to attract controversy.

-Shouldn't the time line start at 757 and not 357?

-I'm not sure if I want Lamordia to lose its peculiar "smothering of reason" to the standardized Magical Level rules.

-Sheriff von Zarovich is dead, that can't be a bad thing now can it?

-I'm not yet familiar enough with the workings of 4e to say what seems balanced and what doesn't, but the relatively low/weak effects of magic items seems in keeping with the nature of magic in the dread realms. Nice to see the Talons equipment featured in there.

-Zherisia as an example of bronze age cultural level while Paridon is CL5? Perhaps you meant Yagno's G'Henna?

-Rules on language are quite good IMHO with a mostly logical grouping of tongues. However, and this does go beyond your work, considering how some Darklords hail from Faerûn and Krynn, wouldn't it make sense that, say, humans in Sithicus and those in Falkovnia share some linguistic similarities? Not being all that familiar with Krynn, I can't say I know much about the languages spoken there, but it's a thought.

Unless we rule that the mists just altered the native language of Soth and his pals...

All in all, great work. Err, might want to get someone to proofread it though: I spotted a few typos here and there, but nothing major.

[Jester of the FoS]

Elves don't seem to have it all that bad, now don't they? Every race has some manner of Ravenloft specific comment about how they fail to properly adapt or seem somehow lost, yet not our standard issue fantasy elves. Perhaps they feel a certain distance from the "nature" that used to nurture them, finding that the mist bound forests have a sinister taint that makes them feel somewhat unwelcome. Unwilling to coexist with humans for the most part (for practical considerations), they are left without a true sanctuary, forever to wonder if the forest may one day swallow them whole.

I did a netbook article on Quoth the Raven a while back. I mostly just wanted to make them less human and more fey.
There's some other stuff in there I never did add to this.

Warforged feel too much like golems with a Robotman vibe. Cool stuff as I'm a fan of the Doom Patrol, but I'm not sold on "Robotman as a player character" in Ravenloft. Golems as player characters is something that has been addressed in the past in other threads, I think, and will likely continue to attract controversy.

I felt most races needed including for maximum options. Except the dragonborn which stump me.
The warforged are 50% good constructs, 10% Robotman, and 40% Alphonse Elirc from Full Metal Alchemist.

Shouldn't the time line start at 757 and not 357?

Oops

I'm not sure if I want Lamordia to lose its peculiar "smothering of reason" to the standardized Magical Level rules.

I felt I had to update all rules, even unpopular ones like Magic Rating from the RL: PHB.

Sheriff von Zarovich is dead, that can't be a bad thing now can it?

75% padding the timeline. 25% straight fan service.

Zherisia as an example of bronze age cultural level while Paridon is CL5? Perhaps you meant Yagno's G'Henna?

I actually meant Timor. You'd think I would know better having written a Gaz on that domain...

Rules on language are quite good IMHO with a mostly logical grouping of tongues. However, and this does go beyond your work, considering how some Darklords hail from Faerûn and Krynn, wouldn't it make sense that, say, humans in Sithicus and those in Falkovnia share some linguistic similarities? Not being all that familiar with Krynn, I can't say I know much about the languages spoken there, but it's a thought.

Drakov is from a very different part of Krynn and likely had no encounter with Silvanesti/Sithican elves.

All in all, great work. Err, might want to get someone to proofread it though: I spotted a few typos here and there, but nothing major.

That's why I'm posting it. It's at version 0.9 now, almost done but needs clean-up and a second set of eyes.

[Joël of the FoS]

I'm also very impressed with the way you tried hard (and succeeded) to keep the flavor of the setting with such limited set of tools as 4e is. Bravo!

More elaborated feedback later.

Joël

[Jester of the FoS]

Right now the player's guide is strictly beta. What I'd call version 0.9 (and un-numbered in the first thread). I'm looking for glaring & subtle balance problems and spelling errors.
As always Nikolas is already proving himself a wonderful sounding board via PMs.

[Zettaijin]

Here's what I found so far... (corrections in bold and I assume that all paragraphs start outside the stat blocks/greyed area)

Page 4

Paragraph 1:

"While they are THE children of humanity, they..."

Paragraph 2:

"humans that POSSESS great physical strength."

Page 5

Paragraph 1:

"but THEY POSSESS some of the magical powers"

Paragraph 2:

Giomorgo look human ALBEITwith dusky skin, dark hair AS WELL AS exotic features that reveal VISTANI blood."

Paragraph 3:

"in the bright VISTANI colours."

Paragraph 5:

"the Vistani LOATHE and reject those"

"will forever find themselves treated as OUTSIDERS, and unable" (this one might require some further editing...)


Page 6

Paragraph 2:

the race's prevalent sociopathic tendencies (remove superfluous RACE) and roughly"


Page 7

Paragraph 4

"However, (What?) pushes their sense of humour into the..."

The last line of this paragraph sounds odd and might need some revision.

Paragraph 5

"enjoying the simple pleasures of life, although THEY often deny themselves these."

Paragraph 6

"Their settlements are FOUND IN secluded valleys and dales, or ENSCONCED between city blocks..."

Page 8

Paragraph 1:

"Most of these pairings result in other lycanthropes, but sometimes a shifter will be born instead." (Just didn't like the usage of "result" thrice in the span of two sentences and since MOST results happen to be actual lycanthropes, shifters should technically be a less common result.)

"(I suggest you remove MOST since it sounds a bit redundant) Often the result of unions between a human and a LYCAN (ok, I'm not sure about this one) in human form..."

Paragraph 2:

Might be good to limit your usage of "most" a bit.

Tieflings intro:

"by the evil" - shouldn't it be "by evil" instead? Your call.

Paragraph 9

"there is some debate AS TO where their souls come from."

"A few warforged claim to have been human (...) OTHERS ("others" should replace "a few" which is redundant) claim to have died..."


Okay, I'll tackle the classes next time. May I remind everyone that English is my second language and thus I shouldn't be trusted to find every typo.

[Jester of the FoS]

I'll likely revise some things. There's at least 3 feats I was unsure of and am being encouraged to revise.
And the half vistani race still needs a tiny bit extra.

I'd like more feats and paragon paths, if anyone has suggestions. Especially paragon feats.

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

Hey Jester,

once again, the player's guide is excellent work. once again, anything I don't like in it is pretty much my own anti-4e bias. Can't really comment on balance issues, since I don't know 4e in depth. But I will echo Joel's comment that you successfully kept

the flavor of the setting with such limited set of tools as 4e is

.

Nice!

[Jester of the FoS]

Updated the player's guide on the main post.

[Nikolas of the Mists]

PM sent, debug error may have eaten it. Let me know if it did

[Jester of the FoS]

I received it. Just busy/ away at the moment (on my much-delayed honeymoon).

Good suggestions as always, much to think about.